Thursday, January 12, 2012

More and better jobs in South Asia

This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is an overview. Chapter two reviews South Asia's recent track record with regard to the quantity and quality of job creation. It traces the relationship of such job creation mostly to overall economic growth and attempts to answer what needs to be done to meet South Asia's employment challenge.

Chapter three discusses the key features of labor markets in South Asia, including where the better jobs are, who holds them, and the implications for the employment challenge ahead. Chapter four reviews the business environment constraints affecting, in particular, those firms that have expanded employment and discusses policy options for overcoming the most binding business constraints in South Asia.

Chapter five analyzes the dimensions of the education and a skill challenge in the region and discusses policy priorities for improving the quality and skills of graduates of education and training systems. Chapter six reviews the role of labor market policies and institutions in encouraging job creation and protecting workers in the formal and informal economy and discusses possible directions for labor market policies, including options to increase the access of informal sector workers to programs that help them manage labor market shocks and improve their future earnings potential. Finally, chapter seven reviews the key constraints to job creation and the policy priorities for creating more and better jobs in conflict-affected areas.

This book investigates how more and better jobs can be created in South Asia.1 It does so for two reasons. First, this region will contribute nearly 40 percent of the growth in the world’s working-age (15–64) population over the next several decades. It is important to determine what needs to be done to absorb them into employment at rising levels of labor productivity.

Second, creating more productive jobs—with jobs defi ned to include all wage work and selfemployment—is the most reliable route out of poverty for a region that is home to more than 40 percent of the world’s absolute poor. The book addresses three major questions.

• Has South Asia been creating an increasing number of jobs and better jobs?

• What determines the quality of job creation, and what is the employment challenge going forward?

• What demand- and supply-side bottlenecks need to be eased to meet South Asia’s employment challenge in the face of intensifying demographic pressure?